Saturday, September 29, 2012

Alan is a senior at a major state university.He has ok grades and some related work
experience.He is a talented young man I
have mentored over the years.He emailed
me the other day to ask for advice concerning a job offer for received for a management
rotation program.Yes, you heard this
right.A college senior with a job offer
in September of their senior year!

The offer was very fair and competitive.The position was awesome.The problem was that when Alan asked the
people around him (probably other students), they coached him to ask for more
money.He asked my opinion.I did not beat around the bush.I knew of the program he was offered and it
is an unbelievable career opportunity.While he might be successful receiving a few more dollars per year in
salary, he would be forming the initial opinions of his new leadership.The situation reminded me of the investment
advice I got years ago “Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.”We all need to know when enough is
enough.I shared my opinion with Alan in
clear, straight forward words.He thanked
me and pointed out that he needed someone to point out the obvious.His friends were thinking too short term. He
accepted the offer.

Do you provide clear, concise advice when it is needed?How do you tell the difference between when a
mentee needs general concepts from direction?

Saturday, September 1, 2012

The day after I presented a leadership lesson on "Delivering
Results" I got this note of appreciation from one of the participants. “Thank
you for your leadership lesson.You
successfully reduced your value.” Out of context, you might think this is a very
questionable complement.

On 29 April 2012, I posted a very controversial leadership concept
that suggested it is all our responsibility to teach the people we lead
everything we know.By doing this, we would
reduce our value in the organization and taken to the extreme, become redundant
(0 par value).It is then the leader’s
responsibility to re-tool their skill-set or move on to a new challenge.This helps explain while large organizations
often appear to have a lot of churn.The
complement above was the result of my sharing this concept with the class
participants and one student following up with a very witty email.

Do you have the gumption to make yourself redundant?Do you drive your value down and up at the
same time? Would you force your own removal?

Leadership Contributors

Leadership = "Connecting people to their future"

"Leadership is a Verb ™" is a community of like minded leaders sharing lessons on leadership, career development, the virtual workplace and diversity. Let others benefit from your learnings by commenting here and sharing this community site.